VERY old and expensive Indian Colonial coins....and free Fire wood!!!

YQQ

Ok guys, what is it with old Indian Colonial Gold and Silver coins and Fire wood?
Well, the coins are expensive... and Firewood is free!!!

last September I went into the bush here on Vancouver island just about every second day... good exercise.. very good... some of you should perhaps try it.
I searched for FREE and old, seasoned and dry wood. Found tons...

at home I cut, split and piled it in a large piles in my old filled in pool room, and I mean large ( 60x30 old filled in pool) room.

in November I was looking for these coins and could not find them. expensive coins.. many K worth.
AND, the worst, they actually belonged to a friend in Germany.
I literally turned my home 3 times upside down, even opened every power panel, just in case of memory laps ( by an EX electrical contractor) trying to find them... NO luck and a lot of sleepless nights. a million tons of guilt on my shoulder.
there were only 2 possibilities left...
1 they went by mistake into the garbage ( they were in a slightly ripped bubble envelope)
2 someone stole them (unlikely as nobody knew where they normally were, even though some friends saw them, because they are beautiful.. and expensive)
3 I hid them in a "very safe place only I knew ( have we all done that?)

what am I going to tell my friend when he comes in May to pick them up (it is peanuts for him)????? there was not a day without thinking about it...
I avoided contact with him pretending all sort of unpleasant things...
to make the story short, I had given up and sent him an email Wednesday, telling him I would call Thursday for a chat, before he goes on a South Asia Business trip for 3 weeks.
here is were "whatever" comes in:
Wednesday night after the hockey game, I run out of fire wood and had to switch to a new pile.
this morning I continued to take from this new pile.............and I nearly had a HEART ATTACK...... there was a bubble envelope ......
under the second layer of wood..... can that be true or is my mind playing tricks...
well, there it was... plus another sheet of 8 1945-1947 silver dollars... had slipped into a crack just big enough, between two logs.
Someone must have called me at the time when I was on the way to secure the envelopes before going away... and they slipped away...
you guys should have heard MY ELATION, VOICE,,, yesssdsdsssssssss, HAPPINESS....
finally I found them and my friend will never know....
But here is my question:
would you tell him if you were in my position?
this morning I did!, I called him 06:30 his time.. woke him up..
and told the story....... He thought I had health problems.... never thought about his coins for a minute.
Guys, this is a true story! I celebrated with a bottle of nice Chilean Red cab.....before going to bed after the call.
here are images of the coins ( had posted them here previously some time ago), to give you an idea... ( there were also 3 rare Colonial German Gold coins with the lot)
just thought I tell the story of the many tons heavy coins.....

lordmarcovan

Glad you found them, if I understood all that correctly.

If you did, then it was probably OK to tell your friend how they were temporarily lost, and how you had ulcers for a while there.

*whew*

SaorAlba

Reminds me of the Charles I jetton I purchased from Filthybroke a couple of weeks ago and promptly misplaced in my desk right after opening the package. I literally looked for a couple of hours, had shredded the envelope and packaging and even checked the shredder. Later that evening I was looking for a post-it note and voila there was my jetton in it's holder - wedged in betwixt the post-it notes. I was literally sweating and cursing at the thought of possibly losing and or destroying a 380 year old jetton in the paper shredder.

Icollecteverything

Hmmm, so you are drinking wine to celebrate, was there wine involved in misplacing them?

Very interesting coins and counterstamps. One of the stamps appears to be shaped like a sword?

lordmarcovan

I can certainly empathize and sympathize, after having just lost a $200+ Roman bronze of Caligula for the last month or two.

It had bronze disease and I was trying to conserve it (and my OTHER Caligula with bronze disease). When I was working on the other one, I heard something hit the hardwood floor below the desk and looked around frantically. Never found it. The floor was cluttered with books and papers.

I searched frantically but knew I was in for a massive engineering project by moving this whole computer hutch and all the nearby furniture.

Finally got around to that yesterday, and beneath the desk were eight or ten formerly Red BU 1951-D Lincoln cents (from a roll that had dropped and scattered last year- most of the under-the-desk coins now ruined, alas), a Barber dime love token, an 1860 Seated dime love token that actually would have filled a hole in my late love token date set, some shark teeth, and several dustbunnies and mats of dog hair the size of jackrabbits. Plus some fossilized cat turds, but maybe that's too much information. Our geriatric cat had a nasty habit of finding secret places to poo before she was banished to the the Great Outdoors for good. (Not to worry- I did fix her up a little house with straw in it, and she seems to like it better out there.)

Can you tell housekeeping is not our strong point around here? But I finally did my spring cleaning yesterday and we're (mostly) tidy around the desk now. All MIA coins accounted for.

The missing Caligula bronze had never fallen, it turns out. It was right there in plain view, on top of the pedestal of the very flatscreen monitor I'm looking at as I type this. It sort of blended in with the shadows and the black monitor, plus I guess it got covered with papers at some point. But it was basically right there in plain sight all along.

As ladymarcovan sez, "If it had been a snake, it woulda bit you!"

(Its bronze disease had advanced during its "disapppearance", unfortunately.)

LochNESS

Well, I had some other comments in mind but after reading all this I will simply say ...

I feel a lot better now, knowing I'm not the only one